Apples Are Ok

Keep Meryl Away

March 27, 1989|By Dean Kleckner.

Meryl Streep is an accomplished actress, but she should be panned for her latest role of celebrity protector of the food supply.

Streep has been using her fame to alarm parents about the safety of the fruits and vegetables their children eat. Her campaign is choreographed in conjunction with a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council charging that children face a serious risk of developing cancer because of pesticide residues, particularly those on apples. She testified before a Senate subcommittee on the alleged dangers.

Streep said she entered the spotlight because she is a concerned mother. I don`t doubt that. I do doubt that her views on agricultural production practices, oncology and federal regulatory procedures would air on the evening news if her name were Jane Streep.

Our society has a problem when the views of a movie star are considered more credible than those of the scientists and regulators at the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Academy of Sciences. Initially, the official assurances about the safety of the food supply drowned in the tidal wave of hysteria caused by the Feb. 26 ``60 Minutes`` broadcast on the resources defense council report and Streep`s subsequent appearance on the Phil Donahue show.

A three-week panic resulted. Apple sales plummeted. School districts stopped buying apples and apple products for school lunches. Was it because school officials read the council`s report, weighed the efficacy of the FDA`s pesticide residue monitoring program or examined how the EPA determines the cancer risk from daminozide, the chemical in question? I doubt it.

I also doubt that school officials and consumers knew that the council`s report relied on data an independent scientific advisory panel of the EPA rejected as invalid and unreliable in 1985 when the agency first sought to cancel the use of Alar (the trade name for daminozide). They probably weren`t aware that the environmental group`s assumptions about acceptable exposure levels and cancer risk are hotly disputed in the scientific community.

It didn`t seem to matter that since 1985 apple growers have responded to concerns about Alar, almost eliminating its use; last season less than 5 percent of the crop was treated with it.

The ``60 Minutes`` producer and reporter accepted uncritically the reasoning of the resources defense council because they had an agreement for an exclusive on release of the report. The result was another everything-causes-cancer story.

Omitted from the program was that all the residues found by Consumers Union, which tested 32 apple juice samples, registered below 0.53 parts per million. EPA`s tolerance for Alar is 20 parts per million, 40 times greater than found in any juice sample.

Ironically, three days after the broadcast, the National Academy of Science`s National Research Council released a 1,400-page report urging Americans to double their consumption of fruits and vegetables to reduce the risk of cancer. The report also said pesticide residues pose an insignificant cancer risk.

Fortunately, the public finally heard the regulators` message that apples are safe, but only after the EPA, FDA and Department of Agriculture issued a joint statement for the hearing at which Streep testified. Without the benefit of such a glamorous forum, that same message had fallen on deaf ears. Farmers are as concerned as anyone about the safety of the chemicals they use and their effect on food and the environment. They are trying alternative methods such as integrated pest management and low-input farming. But it`s unlikely that unwarranted panic will be the catalyst to make them change their methods.

In this episode, the apple industry suffered. But so did we all, by allowing ourselves to be scared. We`ll be better off if we immunize ourselves against every scare story and Academy Award winner by weighing the preponderance of scientific evidence which says our food supply is safe.